


Remembering Winter

by lady_krysis (saekhwa)



Category: Yu Yu Hakusho
Genre: 1000-3000 words, Alternate Universe - Historical, Asian Character, Canon - Anime, Character of Color, M/M, POV Character of Color
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-04-18
Updated: 2006-04-18
Packaged: 2017-10-04 14:24:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/31187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saekhwa/pseuds/lady_krysis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Yusuke is a Japanese soldier lost in the gruesome acts of his fellow soldiers until he finds a victim in the ruin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Remembering Winter

**Author's Note:**

> This is an AU fic, but it's also historical in nature. It's based on the Nanjing massacre, and I tried to be as historically accurate as possible (although I did take some creative liberties).

_Japan  
Present_

He thinks about Nanjing. The city haunts him in the shallow echoes of a courtroom that exists only in his mind. His wife doesn't understand why he wakes in the middle of the night screaming. She doesn't understand how a war marks the internal crevices of a man's humanity and breaks him. She understands pain though, and sometimes, when they're alone, he hurts her because she isn't real to him.

Like now, she's huddled on the floor, her eyes swollen from her tears, and he just stares at her.

"Keiko … ."

She'll make excuses, clean herself up, lay a gentle kiss on his forehead and prepare dinner. He wonders when they became trapped in this cycle, why he grabs fistfuls of her brown hair and sees red.

"Keiko."

She stands and wraps her kimono more snugly against her body. She smiles and reaches out to touch him, taking hold of his arm to support herself.

"I love you, Yusuke." Then she kisses his cheek and walks through the sliding door while he slumps into a chair, covers his face and cries.

_Nanjing, China.  
January 1938_

The orders had always been clear, not the boundaries.

They start shooting at anyone who runs until they watch the Chinese soldiers begin murdering their own people, particularly those soldiers desperately trying to live. But the civilians who run are not spared either, even the children.

In the first weeks, he marches through the town, deaf, blind, detached, and the once heavy scent of gunpowder and blood fades from his sensory perception. He's just searching for soldiers, pulling young boys from their homes and dragging them to the river. By the fourth week, the boys are dragged, and the Japanese soldiers take turns decapitating the boys, throwing their bodies into the Yangtze. By the fifth week, they drag the bodies to the river and let the boys run and begin shooting just to test their accuracy.

Once most of the men are dead, they hunt for women, drag them from burning buildings and the landfill of former homes into the streets. His mind goes somewhere else during those times, so he can't feel her kicks and punches as he and his fellow soldiers strip her and wait in line to rape her until she is no more than a bloody pulp, whimpering and mumbling. It makes some of the soldiers laugh. He can't feel their humor.

Sometimes, the women have an easy ends, a single bullet to the forehead. Most of the time, though, the men play. He plays this morning, using his bayonet instead of his erect dick, watching the blood gushing but finding no satisfaction in the act. He does it because the men around him are doing the same thing, except he is quiet as the sharp edge tears into her thighs. He thrusts until she remains limp, her body twitching. The men laugh at him for his supposedly reverent silence during all of this. He even takes the women's blows quietly, turning his head or blocking the fists before throwing them to the ground.

For the rest of the men, the women's struggles release something more primal in them all, something filthy and dark that relishes in more than just pain as they start hacking off her limbs. They drag another woman from her home, a young girl whose mother they killed hours ago, perhaps days ago. They cut off her newly forming breasts and the commander has the honor of being the first. Rather than soil himself with a child his soldiers deformed, he uses a broken stick nearby then beats her with it until he can no longer see her brown, empty stare.

The weeks become numbing hours, and the soldiers begin hunting the children. He marches through homes and barricades some of the doors. Then he and others watch small faces appear in the windows. They never make it though, because the Japanese soldiers wait with their guns and begin firing on anything that manages to escape the burning mess.

He doesn't even remember sleeping anymore, wandering in the dark in search of another Chinese soldier or another woman, anything to occupy the time in a city that fell weeks ago. It is on this midnight excursion that he happens upon a house and follows the same pattern as before. This time, though, he shoots the little boys and the mother first and spies a young woman huddled in the corner, sobbing.

For the first time, he speaks, even though he's sure she doesn't understand him, but he motions toward her, ordering her to stand with his gun pointed downward at his side.

"Come here," he says, admiring the reddish tint of her hair. "Come here."

She doesn't stand, so much as lunge forward with broken glass gripped in her fist. She screams at him, cursing rapidly. In that brief instant when he drops his gun to seize her wrists, he is devastated by her green eyes, and he inhales a deep breath and smells the blood first, licking his lips and tasting it in the grooves there.

He kisses her because he wants to relish in the taste of her before his senses melt into a numb escapade of the gruesome rhythm to which he's become accustomed. She still struggles, and he finds himself enjoying it, the pressure of their bodies, the barely noticeable heat of hers. He throws her to the ground, his knee thrust firmly into her abdomen before he slaps her, allowing the jarring moment to loosen her grip, so he can throw the glass far from her reach.

Even when she spits in his face, he relaxes into his silence, balling his hand into a fist and bringing it down in the center of her chest because her face is too pretty to mark in such a brutal way. It's in that debilitating moment that he begins to strip off her clothes, using his knife to tear most of it, and when he rips away her pants, he stares in startled awe.

"You're a man," he murmurs, but the striking thought leaves him cooled.

He begins to trace the curve of the other man's jaw, down to the bruised chest and even farther down to the surprise of a limp dick. Grabbing the man's face, Yusuke stares into those green eyes, glittering with pained tears, and he kisses those soft lips again, remembering the metallic taste of blood and sweat. He kisses this man because he doesn't want to be silent anymore, and here, at the corner of the city, no one is watching him.

He jerks his mouth away when he feels the rough indention of teeth, and his fist strikes the man's abdomen and chest again. He throws the man onto his stomach and struggles to loosen his own pants, admiring the texture of the man's skin. Yusuke kisses the small of the man's back because he wants to remember the taste of it, and he knows, after his tongue darts forward, he will always remember this moment as winter, the chilled taste of frost that conceals the flakes of blood.

Wanting this moment for himself, he shoves the tatters of the man's clothing into his mouth to keep him from screaming just before trying to work himself into the man's ass, quickly becoming frustrated with the difficulty of it. In his frustration, he feels the slickness coating his knees, and his logic tells him this is good, despite the rebellion of his mind in simply trying not to process his actions.

He presses his hands into the slickness of the liquid around him and shoves one finger into the man's ass, working it slowly in while his other hand admires the rough texture of the skin beneath him. Then two fingers as he focuses on the heated throb of his dick, pulsing in anticipation. He slathers the liquid on himself as well before thrusting inside, releasing a grunt at the continued resistance but pulling out then thrusting once more until he is firmly settled inside the other man.

Heat is what he knows he will remember next as his rhythmic thrusts become a frantic pulse of need, of the touch and feeling he didn't feel with the women or the girls as his fellow soldiers looked on. Here, he had more than his silence and no watchful eyes remarking upon his slow movements. He felt all of that welling inside him, slamming his fists down while grabbing fistfuls of hair and roughly tugging and thrusting, back and forth until he spills all of that numbness out, until he is left shivering on top of a still body.

He admires the warmth there too while waiting for his heart to slow, while reveling in the quiet frost outside. And he waits until his dick is soft before moving. His hand wrapped firmly around the other man's throat, he reaches down and grasps the other man's semi-erect member, moving his thumb in a circular pattern. Each time the man moans and struggles to buck him off, he tightens his grip on the man's throat and continues, fixing his attention on this action.

Moistening his lips, Yusuke squeezes gently, rolling his thumb into the other man's balls gently at first then more insistently, wanting a response to match his own. The room is quiet save for his own ragged breathing as the man's struggles begin to match gyrating movements until Yusuke's dick is hard again with need and just as the other man spills over his hands, shooting onto the tip of his own erection, he thrusts inside him again. He plants his palms on the man's back and the rhythm becomes an even rougher motion, careless, aching, but so deliciously tight for him to the point of desperation until he feels the tightness in his groin that unleashes in another breathless release.

He lays on the man for some time before moving, matching his breath to the man's as he listens to that rapid heartbeat.

"Your city is gone," Yusuke whispers, knowing the man can't understand him. "I killed your family." He pulls out and stands, fastening his pants. "I have not felt anything for a long time." He stares at the limp figure below him and does the only thing he knows to do.

He turns the other man onto his back again and stares down at him, at those empty green eyes.

"For your honor," Yusuke whispers, reaching for his gun.

But the grasp of his gun isn't enough, and he sees the glitter of the glass and lifts it carefully between his thumb and index finger. He straddles the man and kisses his chest, where he notices the protrusion of a cracked rib. Trailing his fingers once more through that long hair, Yusuke slits the man's throat and exhales, watching until all of that heat leaves him in a chilled room with the gnawing silence.


End file.
